A Fever You Can't Sweat Out
by AllTheNamesITryAreTaken
Summary: Loosely based off of/inspired by the Panic! At The Disco album of the same album. Song by song, a night goes by. A Harry/Ginny story. Could be seen as ignoring the epilogue/. Harry Potter characters and song titles belong to J.K.R. and Panic! Rated T for innapropriate behavior in minors and over-age characters.
1. Introduction

**Act I Scene i: Introduction**

The evening is still, dark and unseasonably cool, the preamble to a tempestuous night. People in all manners of dress rush down the road, much like animals in the wild returning to their burrows in anticipation of a storm.

The bustling crowd winds down the serpentine street, mostly oblivious to the storefronts that line it. A tiny bookshop is closing up, blocking out the night with heavy, velvet curtains across a single window; An old woman manning the desk of a mom-and-pop drugstore is graciously welcoming the third customer of the day, a man who ignores her as he ducks behind the racks and surreptitiously stuffs his inner pockets with candy bars and aspirin; Two clubs are coughing up bouncers along with smoky air, leaving the Herculean guards in clouds of fog to watch the entrances; a single bar, just as smoke-filled and well-populated as the others, is left defenseless, the front door propped open a few inches by a wooden wedge.

It is into this last bar that a young women with flaming red hair and a short, slender figure ventures. She gracefully exits the horde and silently slips through the crack between the door and its frame, into a picturesque lounge with a hazy atmosphere and a dream-like quality...


	2. Martyrdom And Suicide

**Act I Scene ii: The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage**

The environment isn't all that it seems to the girl, of course. She is a girl, you see. Shapely as she may be, at seventeen she can't be anything but, as much as she tries to defy that fact.

Drunken twenty-somethings draped over not-so-drunken fourty-somethings clutter the armchairs dispersed across the carpet, which is graciously black so as not to display stains of its century long inhabitance. Feathered dancers perched upon a foot-high stage perform an out-of-date dance, waving large fans past their glazed-over eyes. The bar is manned by two men, one young and dressed in a flashy vest and green tie, juggling cups and mixing martinis for a ravenous cougar. The other is an old man with a soggy barcloth on his shoulder and hanging jowels, chatting with another elderly man and taking secret sips from a glass of something amber and acrid. And all this at only quarter past seven.

Completely populated with members of most every spectrum of the human race (or those who are old enough, or look old enough, or are sneaky enough to enter a bar), this inexplicably magnetic place is where our story truly begins.

My own eyes have viewed this story - cover-to-cover, preface-to-epilogue - countless times and from every angle. I've scrutinized every detail from the vantage point of each person, from the lucky old men to the drunken girls and even our main characters - our stars, if you will. I can promise you that you'll see the honest, wonderfully outlandish and incredible tale from start to finish if you promise to sit, listen and watch carefully. Eyes - even sharp ones like yours, darling - are deceptive little devils, and you can trust me, but you can't believe everything you hear...


	3. Songs About Money Written By Machines

**Act I Scene iii: London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines**

So we meet one of our star-bound, star-crossed, star-struck friends in the back of the bar with more than a few drinks already in him. Inky hair in an attractive, careless disarray creeps down his face to touch the tops of his eyebrows and earlobes. A sharp contrast to his hair, the young man's skin is as pale as the moon outside, which barely creeps out from behind the milky clouds and purplish sky. His eyes aren't quite the emerald that the girls nearby are whispering to each other about, but a slightly darker shade, layered with regrets, a bit of a haunting, and the slightest sheen of cynicism. You wouldn't see it if you didn't know him, though. That cocky smirk and devil-may-care attitude could fool any stranger. Just like he wants.

His arm is draped over a dark-haired, scantily clad girl. She's older than him, yes, and paler, too. At twenty-three she's more than a girl, I suppose. With all that she's been through, as damaged as she is. Ex-ocean eyes planted in her head connect with his and an ex-beautiful smile stretches across her face. And when I say stretch, I mean it. The skin pulls and tugs across her frame pitifully, giving the impression that it may tear at any second and expose whatever crumpled and shrivelled things lay inside her.

A cigarette is teetering between the boy's index and middle fingers. Or is he a man? I'd've called him one a year ago, but now he seems...less. He is only eightteen, I suppose. But I digress. He's been taking long pulls from his cigarette and blowing smoke out into the the air around his friends. His acquaintances, really.

A stout man that came in with him is telling weak jokes and sipping watered-down whiskey through cracked lips and yellow teeth. His left eye is swollen shut, the result of a birth defect, and his dirt-brown hair is thinning. He bears a remarkable resemblance to a bulldog. Another of his companions is a woman who is clearly over twenty, but who looks strangely like a young child. Rounded cheeks, freckles and large dimples are offset by a curvy, voluptuous figure that seems to be painted over in a tight, flamboyantly orange dress. The last in the troupe is probably the most attractive (besides the raven-haired casanova, of course). His face is thin, almost feminine, and in the smoky room his wispy blonde hair seems to fade and extend into the atmosphere. His feet are propped disinterestedly across the lap of the woman and his sharp amber eyes are on his leader. His slim physique and puckered lips give a drastically different impression to the actions and poses that he is trying to copy off of Harry.

Harry is, of course, our black-haired boy's name. The girly-boy who so wants to be him is named Darwin, but everyone calls him Ducky. At least that what tells people. The bulldog's name is Jack, and the woman in the orange dress is Pam. Skeleton Girl, that dark haired lady friend of Harry's, was born Mallory, but she's gone by so many names, and tonight she'll go by Crystal.

You wouldn't know it the way they swarmed him, but Harry's the newest addition to this little crew. They met him yesterday, while the others have been friends for over a year. Crystal, in that slippery satin dress of hers, really doesn't count. She ran into them at their third bar of the day and has been clinging onto Harry ever since.

Every person in the bar has noticed them. Or him, really. Their 'private' area in the back can be viewed perfectly from every angle of the fume-filled room, and everyone in the room has made their comments.

"Hooligans, always hooligans in here," the old bartender had muttered to his friend crankily, slapping his washcloth down onto the bar.

"They think they're hot shit," a painted princess had hissed to the man who'd been buying her brandy since noon.

"He's gorgeous," the cougar had whispered to herself as she'd walked past him, shooting him a wink.

Jack, Pam and Ducky are basking in his reflected limelight in the musty lounge area. Crystal is just glad to be sitting beside someone who doesn't have a needle poking out of his track-marked arm. But in a few hours, she'll be wishing a needle was so nearby and available for use. Harry just glances around the room, waiting for a waitress to wander by so he can get another glass of something. Anything. Really. He pulls hard on his cigarette and coughs slightly, reaching for the toxicly pink martini that Pam has propped precariously between her knees. He chokes back a sip, nearly gagging, but the coughing stops. The bulldog offers him nachos, which he distractedly waves off as Pam adamently refuses to take back her drink. He curses lightly and places it on the table, dropping his cigarette but and stomping it out on that ebony carpet.

"It's been a long time since I've been bar-hopping," Jack slurs, sucking on his cheese-coated fingers.

"It is great, isn't it?" Ducky asks, eyeing Harry as he speaks. Looking annoyed, though the group he's with is too excited in his presence to notice, he answers.

"Yep. This is exactly how I like spending my Thursdays." His voice is only slightly sarcastic.

Harry's green eyes wander off to the feather dancers on the dais close to the bar. A tall man in pinstriped pants and a violet button-down shirt approaches the girls at that moment, and they halt their dance and lean down to hear him. Just seconds later they are nodding and exiting the stage through the golden curtain behind them and disappearing into some back room that from the front seems impossible, as the stage looks to be pressed parallel to the wall.

Harry pulls another cigarette from his pocket and his eyes dart around. When he notices how closely he is being watched, he raises his smoke in silent request. Jack and Ducky stumble over themselves to light it, nearly igniting each other's sleeves in the sramble. Nodding his thanks, Harry places it loosely between his teeth as another patron slides through the bar's front door...


End file.
